Wake Up Call: Squire Patton Boggs Loses Claim to Name in China

September 14, 2017

• If you browse to squirepattonboggs.net, you won’t get the web site of Washington, D.C.-based global law firm Squire Patton Boggs, rather you’ll get a Chinese site using the same name. The U.S. firm recently lost a legal fight with the Chinese company that legally registered that domain name, but it has vowed to fight on. The Chinese company similarly took on Norton Rose Fulbright. (World Trademark Review) (Asian Lawyer via Law.com)

• A former professor’s recently unsealed $285 million whistle-blower lawsuit against the now-closed for-profit Charlotte School of Law and its owner led to a federal investigation of the school. It is not known if that investigation remains active. (New York Times DealBook)

• Covington & Burling vice chairman Lanny Breuer said his work on a case challenging the Trump administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program feels personal, because his parents had to flee Nazi Europe to come to America, just like the parents of today’s DREAMers had to do. But he told BLB recently that his firm is neither pro- nor anti-Trump. (BLB)

• Gizmodo general counsel Lynn Oberlander talked recently to Columbia Journalism School students about a darkening legal climate for journalists since a Florida jury awarded $140 million to Hulk Hogan last year in his privacy lawsuit against Gawker Media. (CJR)

• A Kirkland & Ellis LLP associate recently got a chance to shine in helping to resolve a complex pro bono case over how to efficiently distribute copyright royalty payments from composer Tony Geiss’s estate to 10 of New York’s largest charities. (Bloomberg BNA via BLB)

Legal Market

• San Diego’s biggest law firm, Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch LLP, announced a new managing partner, John D. Alessio. Alessio, who focuses on complex class actions and business and employment litigation, will take over from Tom W. Turner Jr., who is stepping down after 17 years to return to full-time practice. (BLB)

• Rapid technological and geopolitical changes are having an impact on the role and job requirements of general counsel in the manufacturing sector. (Forbes)

• Quinn Emanuel partner Jenny Durkan has taken leave to run for mayor of Seattle. (Am Law Daily)

Equifax

• The huge data breach at Equifax Inc. is being reviewed by the New York Department of Financial Services for possible violations of state law or regulations. (Bloomberg BNA BLB)

• How fraudsters use scraps of data to build fake identities to get real credit cards. (Bloomberg Businessweek)

• The Equifax hack has proved to be a boon for Symantec’s identity-theft protection service. (Bloomberg)

Legal Actions

• The Trump administration is increasingly allowing federal border agents to seize and search — sometimes violently — the mobile phones and laptops of thousands of U.S. citizens and lawful immigrants as they enter the country, two advocacy groups said in a lawsuit. (Bloomberg via BLB)

• Martin Shkreli’s big mouth landed him in jail even before his fraud conviction did. (Bloomberg)

• California is the biggest state so far to seek to pull back the curtain on pharmacy-benefits managers, as the industry aggressively tries to thwart a wider push for transparency. (Bloomberg)

Regulators and Enforcement

• The U.S. charged former UBS Group AG trader Andre Flotron with conspiracy and fraud over his suspected role in manipulating the price of precious metals. Flotron’s lawyer is Marc Mukasey of Greenberg Traurig LLP. (Bloomberg)

Mueller Probe

• Russia’s effort to influence U.S. voters through Facebook and other social media is said to be a “red-hot” focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election and possible links to President Donald Trump’s associates. (Bloomberg)

• The Justice Department said it will not permit two FBI officials close to fired director James Comey to appear privately before a congressional committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, in order to “protect the integrity” of Mueller’s investigation. (AP via Bloomberg)

The Trump Administration

• Trump named Stephen Vaden, a former Jones Day litigation associate in Washington, D.C., as general counsel to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (National Law Journal)

• Trump blocked a Chinese-backed investor from buying Lattice Semiconductor Corp., casting a cloud over Chinese deals seeking U.S. security clearance and spurring a call for fairness from Beijing. (Bloomberg)

• It might not be possible to rescind Obama-era restrictions on collateralized loan obligations, because the rules have already had a “lasting transformative effect on markets.” (Bloomberg Gadfly)

• A little-known Republican Senate aide is in line for a $670,000-a-year job heading the accounting industry’s watchdog, despite lacking experience in the auditing profession. (Bloomberg)

Happening in SCOTUS and Other Court

• The 32 cases on the docket so far for the U.S. Supreme Court’s new term starting Oct. 2 include the potentially earthshaking partisan redistricting case Gill v. Whitford, and the dispute over Trump’s controversial travel ban, among other cases. (Bloomberg BNA via BLB)

• Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo can proceed with a planned October trial over claims Uber Technologies Inc. stole trade secrets for self-driving vehicles, after a U.S. appeals court declined to punt the case to an arbitrator. (Bloomberg)

• Anthony Weiner, the former congressman and New York mayoral candidate whose career and personal life were wrecked in a series of sexting scandals, blamed his legal troubles on untreated addiction and his 15-year-old victim. (Bloomberg)

Laterals, Moves, Law Firm Work

• Cheddar Inc., a live-streaming financial news network based in New York, said it named its first general counsel and chief people officer, picking Anjali Kumar. She’s a former senior counsel at Google and, most recently, general counsel and head of social innovation at Warby Parker, an online seller of prescription eyewear. (Corporate Counsel)

• Massachusetts’ governor named for a judgeship to the state’s appeals court John Englander, who is general counsel of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, and previously spent 30 years at Goodwin Procter. (Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly)

Technology

• The U.S. government moved to ban the use of Kaspersky Lab security software by federal agencies amid concerns the Russian company may have links to state-sponsored cyberespionage activities. (Washington Post)

• Facebook Inc. is adding new standards that will keep advertising off fake news videos and objectionable content, moves that have become essential as the company starts to put ads inside videos and articles, instead of separately on the news feed. (Bloomberg)

• A new series of white papers from Gowling WLG considers if it is possible to make self-driven cars “cyber-resilient.” (GowlingWLG)

Legal Education

• Zachary Fardon, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, is joining Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law as a visiting scholar this fall, to give a series of lectures on gun violence in Chicago. In August, Fardon said he was rejoining his old law firm King & Spalding. (Northwestern) (BLB)

Miscellaneous

• Immigration lawyers suspect employees at two Phoenix-area motels in the Motel 6 chain of calling Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to report undocumented people who check into their rooms. (GQ)